Where Rider and Horse Share Strong Ties

FORT DAVIS, Texas -- In 1980 Fonda Ghiardi was living with her daughter on a farm outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, where she worked in private practice as an art conservator. Her real passion, however, was horses.
While a student at Penn State University, Ghiardi was able to learn to ride and compete in the sport of dressage and combined training. She was hooked, and after years of competing and training, by the 1990s she was breeding racehorses and her daughter was competing in Pony Club and combined training.
But something was missing in the relationship of rider to horse.
In 1991, Ghiardi's daughter came home one day and said she was tired of the competitive aspect of her riding and the focus on winning, and was quitting. Ghiardi agreed: There had to be some more meaningful way to work with these sensitive, beautiful animals besides the endless goal of riding to win.
Ghiardi started volunteering in therapeutic riding locally and found the experience more rewarding than any of the other horse work she had done.